Spiritual by-passing is the tendency to use spiritual ideas or practices as a means of side-stepping or avoiding deeper levels of mindset and emotional healing work.

I can hand on heart say I’ve been there. I wasn’t intentionally avoiding looking at those things, after all, for the longest time, I was someone who understood myself and life through the lens of psychology. I’d done a degree in Psychology and I could psycho-analyse the shit out of anyone. I could spot someone’s defence mechanisms a mile away. I’d done Landmark Forum and forgiven my dad years before. I’d done a Tony Robbins program to smash my goals. I’d made peace with past break-ups and other traumatic experiences (or so I’d thought). I was up for doing the work.

Despite all of this, life still wasn’t going to plan (wtf). So, I once again sought outside of myself to find the solution and I turned all my attention to spirituality. I became certified to teach meditation, I hit my yoga mat hard, I immersed myself in Law of Attraction and other spiritual writings. Yet, things were still not poppin! I mean opening myself up to new levels of spiritual awareness provided lots of value to my journey, but I still found myself in the same patterns getting the same results.

One day, I was sharing my story with a wise woman who said “it looks like you’ve fallen into the trap of a spiritual by-pass my girl. You see we are multi-dimensional beings. Yes, we are a soul, but we are also a mind and a body, and all aspects of ourselves need to be honoured if we want to experience our full potential.’

She was right. I was still harbouring grief, major self worth issues and my fear voice was running rampant. I just had really good defence mechanisms in play to protect myself, that even I couldn’t see. That’s the thing, we often can’t see our own shadows, and if we want to embrace and experience the full alchemy of spirituality we must get humble and curious, be willing to acknowledge our human limitations and use them as a springboard from which to grow.

I couldn’t have seen my own shadows, shone a light and de-powered them without the support of someone who’d had the courage to go before me, someone who could raise my level of conscious awareness by holding space with theirs. And, while at times the process felt confronting and even painstaking at points, the value of going deep within lead to the most profound sense of personal empowerment and liberation.

Id love to know if this resonates.

Much love.